Does attractiveness sell? Women's attitude toward a product as a function of model attractiveness, gender priming, and social comparison orientation

In the present experiment, 85 female undergraduate students were presented with an advertisement for chewing gum, featuring an attractive or a moderately attractive same‐sex model. Participants were either primed on their gender or not. Results showed that gender‐primed women were willing to pay more for the product when it was promoted by an attractive model, and, with increasing levels of social comparison orientation, women showed a more positive attitude toward the product when it was promoted by an attractive as opposed to a moderately attractive model. In contrast, when they were primed on being a female, women were willing to pay less when the product was promoted by an attractive model, and, with increasing levels of social comparison orientation, they had a less positive attitude when the product was promoted by an attractive as opposed to a moderately attractive model. Implications for advertising are discussed.